First Grade News
by Shelli Eickmeier
November 18, 2008
First Grade News
By Shelli Eickmeier
The First Grade would like to extend Holiday Greetings to all of you. We have been working, growing, and learning many new things. We play outside daily, so please send warm coats, gloves, and hats. We want everyone to stay warm and healthy.
Our ECRI Reading is coming along nicely and we are becoming fluent readers. We continue to work on our phonograms and have even added a Phonogram Quiz, where the students are asked to listen to the phonogram sound and be able to write down the phonogram. This is a big challenge, but it will help our reading and assist us when we are writing.
Our sentence writing is another important part of our morning. We use Finger Spelling to help us with our writing. As we say the sounds we hear in the word, we touch one finger. This is a concrete way for them to vocalize the sounds and have a starting point to begin writing. We have been writing about plant parts, maps, and other concepts we are learning in Socials Studies and Science.
Please help your student continue reading their green booklet of high frequency words when they bring them home. Our goal is to be able to read the first 12 sets by the end of first grade and all 24 sets by the end of second grade. Many of the High Frequency words are words that do not sound out so the children will need to know them from memory. I explain to them that it’s like knowing their name. They don’t have to think about it, they just know it. Having your child practice their reading skills daily is so important.
In Math, we have been telling time to the hour and half-hour, identifying and giving the coin amounts, and of course counting change. This can be a fun and easy activity to work on at home, because we all LOVE MONEY!! We will be collecting some data about the first grade class’ favorite colors. We will let you know what the results are. Measurement and discovering how to measure, what tool to use, and what unit of measure to use will also be fun. We will use our hand, foot, arm span, a pace, and many other ways to measure objects in our classroom. We will soon discover that you have to be very accurate when you measure.
We continue to work on maps in Social Studies and have made a large map and map key of Bellwood. This has been a big project, but the students have done a wonderful job. It is hanging in the gym, so stop by and take a look. Learning about early setters fits in nicely with the Thanksgiving Holiday. We compared how we live now, with how the Pilgrims and other early settlers did things and how much work it would have taken to make one meal. Boy, our world sure has changed and we like the fact that we have electricity, television, and chicken nuggets. Your child should also be able to tell you that George W. Bush is our current president, but on January 20th Barrack Obama will be our new president. We had our own First Grade election and Mr. Obama won by one vote.
We will have the opportunity to go with the second graders to sing to our friends at The David Place on December 19. The Christmas Program is December 22 at 7pm and we will dismiss for the holiday break at 1:30 on December 23rd. Have a safe and wonderful holiday season.
Merry Christmas !!
